We've spoken about this before, but a flat tax benefits the wealthy and places far more burden on the poor. You've said before that your reasoning is that the wealthy are using loopholes to pay 0%, so 20% is much better than 0%, but I really do think it's much better to close the loopholes and actually enforce tax law rather than scrapping it all and starting over. In the US the main problem is enforcement - people aren't paying what they're supposed to.
The biggest problem to me, is that the extremely wealthy aren't high income earners, so income tax doesn't really even touch those people, the US will have to get serious about taxing inheritance, ban using wealth as collateral for loans, etc (a big reason why a flat tax benefits the wealthy). If you don't properly tax the very wealthy, they then have undue influence on elections, which spirals into the chaos of Elon spending $277M to get Trump elected - that's way too much power.
Just using it as an example in this case, though I do think that it would be better. It would still requiring enforcement and loophole closing, and all that shit about transferring to other countries through high-interest loans to dodge taxes etc would have to be shutdown. Oh look - there is a good shutdown!
Income comes in many forms. All investments should be flat taxed too, right? Working should be far more lucrative than passive earning.
If that is all it took, it is incredibly cheap and the system is incredibly broken. Oh, hang on.
Absolutely agree that working should be far more lucrative than passive earning.
Hahaha, Elon isn't the only reason Trump won, but the fact that he has more influence than someone whose family has lived in America for generations but currently lives in a mobile home is not good at all... but yes, the system is incredibly, incredibly broken - which wouldn't be such a bummer if the US didn't also affect every other country on the planet.
It doesn't necessarily mean it is bad. Money alone shouldn't be the only indicator, but I don't think everyone should have an equal influence in the world, especially currently. Some people should have far less influence than they do, some a bit more. But just imagine if someone living in a trailer had the same influence over your health choices as your doctor.
Exactly. I think the RoW should be doing it all it can to break ties. Yet instead, they are doubling-down in a hope to keep a single market alive, instead of building a diverse and robust group of markets where many more people could benefit.
I'm not at all suggesting that everyone should have equal influence in the world. That is a bananas idea that goes against the whole idea of education, expertise and qualifications.
The idea of a democracy is that everyone (of voting age) gets an equal say in which experts are granted administrative power to improve the lives of those voters.
Gerrymandering, Voter ID Laws, Campaign Finance Laws all diminish that equal say, including obviously billionaires contributing massive finances to sway voters towards policy that benefits them over the voters themselves. I think it is bad. I'd much prefer that corporate and individual donors were not allowed and campaign finances were tax payer funded.
You obviously have been in the US a while, so how do you see it in comparison to AUS, where voting is mandatory? In my opinion, it should be mandatory, otherwise it is far easier to swing votes one way or another.
FYI, I'm back in Aus now. I didn't want my tax dollars funding Trump's ICE and I couldn't trust that he wouldn't blow up my work visa overnight.
I agree that it should be mandatory and I think it would change everything in the US.
With voluntary voting, politicians have to appeal to the highly motivated loud minorities because they're the ones that show up. With mandatory voting, politicians appeal to the centrist majority.
The US also needs a non-partisan (and non-corruptible) Electoral Commission like Australia's AEC to properly referee elections. Republicans often shut down voting booths in areas that would vote against them, so richer people spend 5 minutes voting but poorer people might have to stay in line 8,9 maybe 14 hours to vote, on a workday.
The US has an extremely religious component that is a really strong voter block that holds a lot of power, I think mandatory voting would dramatically reduce that power.
Yeah, this is a problem.
Yes, it is pathetic. And voting on a workday, how idiotic... Mandatory means that it is in everyone's best interest to make it as easy as possible.